Visualisation

They are stuck on the word, not on the ability. Somewhere along the line they picked up the idea that visualising means a picture appears in front of them, in colour, like a film playing on the inside of their eyelids. It does not happen for them, so they decide the door is shut.

So I want to take the word apart on this page, because once it is apart, nearly everybody finds they have been doing this all their lives.

The front door

I do this with every new class, and it has never failed.

Close your eyes and imagine your front door. Now describe it to me. What colour is it. Which side are the hinges on. Is there a handle or a knob, and is it round or a lever. Is there glass in it, a number, a screen door in front of it, a mat.

Every single person in the room can do that. Nobody has ever sat there and said they have no idea what their own front door looks like.

You have just visualised. You made what I call a mind's eye image of your door and you read the details off it. Whether or not a picture appeared is beside the point. You knew which side the hinges were on, and you got that from looking, in the only way the mind looks.

What it actually feels like

Very few people get imagery as if they were watching a movie. Over the years I have met a handful, and for some of them it is more of a nuisance than a gift. Most people have a perception of an image. They know what is there. They can move around in it, zoom in on a part of it, and tell you what is on the left, and if you ask whether they saw it they will hesitate and say, well, sort of.

Sort of is what visualisation is for the great majority of us.

Take a favourite memory. A holiday, a particular kitchen, a dog you had as a kid. You can see it even with your eyes open, sitting in a room that looks nothing like it. The memory happens somewhere behind your eyes, in a sense that is part seeing, part knowing, part feeling.

That is the sense you use in meditation. It was never about the eyes.

Where the myth comes from

The word is the problem. Visual is sitting right there in the middle of it, and so people take it literally. If we had called it picturing, or sensing, half the people who say they cannot do it would never have had the thought.

There is a second part to the myth, which is that everyone else is seeing in full colour and you are the only one who is not. People sit in a circle, the teacher says see the golden light, and every head nods, and each person quietly assumes the nodding heads around them are seeing something they are not. Nearly all of them are in the same boat, and nobody says so.

I say so, in every class, early. It lets the air out of the room.

The other senses

Some people are simply not picture people, and that is fine, because the mind has more than one way in.

When I say imagine a lemon, cut in half, and you squeeze it over your tongue, your mouth waters. No image is needed for that. When I say think of walking barefoot on hot bitumen in January, your feet know before your head does. When I say the smell of rain on a hot road, you have it.

So when a meditation asks you to see something, feel free to hear it, smell it, feel it under your hands or know it is there. The instruction is a doorway. Which sense you use to walk through it is yours to choose. Some of my strongest students over the years have been feelers and knowers who never saw a picture in their lives.

The photo exercise

This is the one I give people who are still not convinced. It starts from something real and lets the mind do what it already does.

1. Choose a photograph of a place you have been. A holiday photo is ideal. The waterfall, the beach, the bush track, the view from a verandah. Somewhere your body remembers.

2. Sit with it for a minute with your eyes open. Where is the light coming from. What is on the far left. What is the ground made of. What would it sound like.

3. Close your eyes and describe it, out loud if you are alone. Front door rules. Say what is there. Do not grade yourself on whether a picture arrived.

4. Now step into it. Put yourself at the spot where the camera was and feel the ground under your feet. Feel the temperature. If there is water, hear it. If it is the bush, smell it. Stay there for a few breaths.

5. Turn around. Describe what is behind you, which was not in the photo. Your memory will fill it in, and if memory runs out your imagination will carry on without a bump, and you will not be able to tell where one stopped and the other started.

6. Open your eyes and look at the photo again. Notice how much was right.

Do this with a different photo each day for a week. By the end of the week step four is instant, and most people find that the sense of being there is clearer with their eyes shut than it was when they were looking at the print. That is the mind's eye, and it has been working all along.

Where it goes from here

Once you trust the sense, the rest of this hub opens up. The safe place on the Going Deeper page is a visualisation. The staircase going down is a visualisation. The healing energy soaking into your hands in the washing exercise is one too. A picture is optional for all of them. What they need is for you to know the thing is there and to feel it.

The same sense, later on, is the one that carries intuition. A message from your guides rarely arrives as a film. It arrives as a sort of, a knowing with a picture half attached, and the people who have been waiting for a movie their whole lives walk straight past it. Stop waiting for the movie.

The mistakes people make

Trying to force a picture. The harder you push the less you get. Describe, and the image looks after itself.

Comparing yourself with people who say they see clearly. A few do. Most are being generous with the word.

Skipping the exercise because it seems too easy. It is easy. That is the point.

Giving up on a guided meditation because the first instruction was to see something. Swap the sense and keep going.

You have a front door. You have been looking at it with your eyes shut since you were a child. Describe it, and trust what you find.

If you would like this read against your own chart, my readings are here.